‘We Are the Sport of Jackie Robinson, and We Need to Lead by Example’

A little over a year ago, Billy Bean, Major League Baseball’s ambassador for inclusion, began hearing from people outside the sport who were concerned about a growing phenomenon inside the game.

The annual hazing routine that forces rookies to dress in outlandish costumes for a day, including having some dress as women, had taken on more prominence in recent years because photographs of the ritual were showing up on social media outlets.

The people who came to Bean said they felt that the costumes that depicted women were often demeaning and offensive and now were being seen everywhere. He relayed the concerns to other people in the commissioner’s office and in the players’ union, the Major League Baseball Players Association, and so began a conversation that has now led to a rule change stitched into the new collective bargaining agreement.

The general practice of making rookies wear costumes is still permitted. Players can dress in pajamas or as superheroes or overgrown babies. But no one may wear costumes depicting women, whether willingly or forced into it.

“We are the sport of Jackie Robinson, and we need to lead by example,” Bean said. “We are not trying to take the fun away from the players. This is no different than making sexist comments about women in the workplace or about people’s religious beliefs or ethnic background or the language they speak or their sexual orientation.”

The new rule prohibits anyone from dressing up as women or wearing costumes that may be offensive to individuals based on their race, sex, nationality, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or other characteristics.

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Pitcher Ian Kennedy dressed as Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz” with the Yankees in 2007.CreditBill Kostroun/Associated Press

While other sports have their own hazing rituals, such as forcing rookies to sing their college fight songs in public, it is baseball that is identified with the wearing of costumes.

Bean, a former major league player who came out publicly as gay in 1999, was hired in 2014 to lead baseball’s efforts at inclusion. He said that when he played in the 1980s and ‘90s, the hazing rituals usually included activities like carrying luggage for veterans. The practice of having the rookies dress in costumes has also existed for decades, Bean said, but back then, it was not publicized the way it is today.

One concern is that players in high schools and colleges might increasingly emulate the costume hazing now that it has become more visible on social media, and would do so in an unsupervised manner.

Although some major league rookies have objected to the custom of dressing up in costumes, which usually takes place late in the season, others have thought of it as funny and happily posed for photos. Earlier this year, the Mets veterans made their rookies, including the reserve outfielder Brandon Nimmo, don dresses and wigs as characters from the film “A League Of Their Own.”

“I guess I’m sad to see that go,” Nimmo said Tuesday when asked about the new ban on such costumes. “Not my decision, but I’m glad I got to partake in it last year. I wouldn’t trade that.”

Nimmo spoke as he was participating in the annual Mets holiday party at Citi Field. He was dressed as an elf, which, under the new rule, would not be of bounds, Christmas party or no Christmas party.

Also at Citi Field on Tuesday was the Mets’ All-Star pitcher Noah Syndergaard, who was playing the role of Santa Claus — a fuzzy blue one in this instance. He recalled being part of a rookie ritual in 2015 in Cincinnati in which he and his fellow first-year players had to put on tight underwear and pajamas and walk the streets of the city.

“I wouldn’t say I understand it,” Syndergaard said when asked about the new rule banning women’s costumes. “But I have no say in it.”

Mets General Manager Sandy Alderson said he frowned on the whole practice of having major league rookies dress up in costumes, regardless of what outfits they wore. A former Marine, Alderson noted that there had been similar practices in the military.

“It’s divisive and undercuts morale,” he said. “Is it constructive? Is it useful? Is it juvenile? It’s probably juvenile. It’s probably not useful or constructive in too many ways.”

In 1999, a Mets hazing ritual actually turned violent when the Cuban-born rookie Jorge Toca, a reserve first baseman and outfielder, refused to participate. Shortstop Rey Ordonez, who was also from Cuba, obstinately defended Toca, and when the tension escalated, Ordonez wound up being punched in the face by another Mets teammate, the utility player Luis Lopez.

“Do you want an activity that is supposed to be a uniter turn into a divider?” asked Al Leiter, a pitcher on that team and now a television baseball analyst. “Especially at that time of the year, when you are headed into the postseason?

“And as an industry, do you really want your star players being photographed in a thong? Does it make sense to have photographs of Bryce Harper or Mike Trout dressed in a G-string or a ballerina tutu? If it were me, I wouldn’t want that.”

In 1996, Los Angeles Dodgers veterans cut up a dress suit belonging to pitcher Chan Ho Park, then in his first full season in the major leagues. Park exploded, screaming invectives and throwing furniture and food around the clubhouse.

Most cases are less volatile. Years ago, the third-base prospect Drew Henson of the Yankees was made to wear a wedding dress, and pitcher Chien-Ming Wang and second baseman Robinson Cano were made to dress as female Yankee cheerleaders.

When the Expos existed, National League teams liked to time their hazing events with their exit from Montreal, forcing the rookies to wear their costumes in public through customs.

Bean said those who might criticize the new rule as being just another example of political correctness would be missing the point.

“The people who are making a majority of those comments are not the people that those jokes are directed at,” Bean said, “and that is an easy seat to sit in and point fingers and say you are ruining something.”

In any case, not all the costumes are sexually oriented. Sometimes, players dress as superheroes, or as Elvis Presley, or, as the Yankees recently did, as 1980s rappers.

“We’re going to give the players the opportunity to show how creative they can be in a way that is not shaming or disparaging anyone that is part of that club, or a fan that might sit in one of their seats during their 81 home games,” Bean said. “I think it’s a responsibility they can meet, and I hope we are remembered for putting this conversation out there.”

A version of this article appears in print on , Section B, Page 11 of the New York edition with the headline: New Rule on Rookie Hazing Costumes Means Goodbye, Norma Jean. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe